Sam started fourth grade on Wednesday, August 3. This was entirely his decision: I'd initially planned on beginning somewhere around August 15, though I hadn't nailed down dates or made any definite plans (to say that I'm not the most organized person you'll ever meet is an understatement). But Sam was ready to get started, and so we did.
One of the great things about homeschooling is that I can tailor my teaching approach to his specific needs, interests, and preferences. For example, Sam is someone who loves routines but who also needs some room to let his creativity take charge. When we sat down together to develop a schedule, this is what we came up with:
Every day will include practice in reading, writing, grammar, and math as well as physical education (and by "physical education," I mean running around outside or taking a walk). We'll spend anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes on each of these subjects depending on how we're feeling and how much time Sam needs on a particular topic.
I feel strongly about the reading/writing/reflection activity that will start each day. This activity will give Sam a chance to ease into his lessons, read about a variety of topics (on Thursday it was cyanobacteria; on Friday it was Harry Potter), use his writing skills, and practice his handwriting. It will give me a chance to get creative with prompts and find ways to help him synthesize information from previous days.
To build some flexibility into the schedule, we divided the days not into Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/etc., but days where we spend a significant amount of time on history (A days), business (B days), arts and crafts (C days), and science (D days). This past Thursday was a D day: Sam wanted to learn more about bacteria and early life on Earth. On Friday he wanted to study marketing and advertising strategies that he can apply to his online business, so that was a B day. At this point, I'm going to let him pick what he wants to focus on. If that means doing science three days in a row, that's fine with me. I'll just track what we do on a daily basis so that we can balance it out with other topics later on down the road.
Because we're on the road and visiting so many interesting places, field trips will be an important part of the curriculum. We celebrated the first day of school with a field trip to various sites in San Angelo: the playground, the library, a sandwich shop, and the San Angelo Nature Center, where Sam got to meet and pet a snake named Bubbles, an opossum named Marie, and several other animals native to this area.
All in all, the first week (well, half week) went really well, and I'm excited to see what next week will bring. Spending more time with Sam and watching him get excited about what he's learning is definitely a major benefit to becoming a homeschooling (roadschooling) family.
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